Cover Story

Enterprise Mobility

The Mobile Enterprise

The trend of mobile working is starting to catch on in India and organizations are moving to support this trend. By Rajendra Chaudhary

Businesses today have become increasingly mobile and with the rise in mobility, organizations are realizing the need for tools that facilitate, manage and monitor their greatly dispersed workforce. Getting the right information at the right time to the right people in the right place has never been more important and companies are looking to state-of-the-art communications to help address the associated challenges. Although it is still early days for ‘mobile working’ in India compared to the more advanced geographies of the US and Europe, the trend is starting to become increasingly apparent across industries and sectors here as well.

At Marico, the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) major, a number of employees work from outside the four walls of the office. This population largely consists of globetrotting senior management and mid-level executives and members of the company’s sales force. The company says that this sort of an approach of visiting customer locations is necessary thanks to the changing rules of business and customer engagement. Business today is more competitive than ever before and customers demand a greater level of commitment from the companies that they choose to do business with.

While this new approach is an apt response to the changed scenario, it entails the key challenge of information access or availability for the mobile worker.

“We expect our workforce to perform just as effectively on the road as it does in the office,” said Girish Rao, Head- IT solutions, Marico. “However, in order to achieve this, they need to be equipped with the access to the same sets of services and applications that they would get back in our offices. These include access to office e-mail or messaging systems, information systems and access to corporate applications in real-time. Simply put, they want their office to accompany them wherever they go.”

Marico offers its mobile workforce access to Microsoft Outlook on their smartphones and PDAs through GPRS connectivity. Traveling executives have real-time access to office e-mail servers and they can view and edit attachments, manage appointments and tasks using their smartphones. Similarly, for sales force personnel at the distributor level, Marico has provided them with PDAs using which they can take orders from customers, generate invoices and update the system while in the field.

If you thought Marico was the only one in the quest for enterprise mobility, think again. Companies like HPCL, TVS Motors, Hero Honda and several other large organizations have been engaging in efforts to proliferate the concept of mobility among their mobile population. At Hero Honda, for instance, the mobility applications currently in use range from basic features like access to e-mail, the Intranet portal, various workflow applications and the SAP backend. While the access is role and need based, users can access these applications either via a laptop with a data card or a mobile phone or both in some cases.

At HPCL, some members of the sales force have access to corporate ERP applications. Users in remote areas with no access to the Intranet portal can access the SAP system using laptops and data cards through a secure VPN connection. This facility is available only for a select group and these users can monitor sales, take orders and update the corporate system with relevant information from the field.

These initiatives are a clear indication of the growing importance of enabling mobility in the enterprise. As a result, telecommuting, collaboration, mobility tools and remote access solutions are fast becoming important strategies for organizations hoping to bring in greater flexibility in their operations and boost workforce productivity. Moreover, the fact that the CIO who we now see as more of a business strategist than a technologist is responsible for ensuring the tight integration of business and technology to help control costs and increase productivity. All of this is also leading to a greater focus on the business benefits of mobility.

Adding fuel to the cause of mobility is the slew of softer benefits of enterprise mobility says Rao. “Though it is mostly about improving the efficiency of the business and enhancing the mobile worker’s productivity, mobility also helps employees achieve an optimum work-life balance. For an organization like ours, where we have a culture of assessing employees based on the deliverables and not on how many hours have they spent in the office, it makes sense to invest in tools and technologies that help facilitate mobility.”

Too Ad Hoc and Basic

T.G. Dhandapani, Corporate CIO, TVS Motor

While there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Indian organizations, at least the bigger ones, are warming up to the idea of enterprise mobility, their strategies appear to be ad hoc. They continue to fall back on tried and tested technologies such as e-mail, shared files and Web-based private portals.

Mobile e-mail is probably one of the most significant developments in enterprise mobile technology allowed workers to keep up with their e-mail in real-time even while out of the office. However, mobile email is almost a given for today’s business users.

Push/Pull based SMS is another popular application. Along with mobile mail, it is often the entry point for many organizations. TVS Motors which adopted this technology not too long ago currently uses such a system to provide the latest corporate information to users on their mobile devices. By texting a query to a standard number, the user gets a system-generated response within a few seconds.

“The solution is integrated with our SAP back-end for retrieving the desired information. The messages are relayed through TVS’ service provider who transmits the messages back and forth to the applications residing at our end,” informed T.G. Dhandapani, Corporate CIO, TVS Motor.

The company also has a Blackberry solution deployed for e-mail and workflow processes for managing tasks such as leave and travel etc.

For most organizations, mobile solutions for enterprises primarily consist of personal or business-owned mobile phones/devices that they deploy on an ad hoc basis and companies often have little control over them since they usually rely heavily on the telecom carrier. When a company’s mobility strategy hinges on a specific carrier, as is the case at most organizations currently, it runs several risks. For instance, in scenarios such as these it can be particularly challenging for the organization to retain call logs, recordings or voice mails, which in turn can lead to compliance challenges. These sorts of information often reside on the carrier’s systems that are not integrated with enterprise calling or messaging systems.

Another issue with the ad hoc solutions is that they often lack the necessary security and compliance features. The devices can be lost or hacked relatively easily and can offer unlawful entry points into corporate systems. With the proliferation of devices through to a larger user base, these threats will only grow if not mitigated properly through greater enterprise controls.

It is therefore imperative that enterprises do not take shortcuts by relying on an ad hoc mobility strategy. Rather they should opt for comprehensive approach to mobility, which entails deeper integration with enterprise data and applications among other things.

The essentials

ST Sathiavageeswaran, General Manager – Information Systems, HPCL

Any technology related investment has to be guided by clear business objectives and investing in enterprise mobility is no different. Hence, before taking the plunge it is important to strategize carefully on the roadmap.

There are several elements that organizations need to take into account and the activity fundamental to developing an apt mobile strategy is performing a mapping exercise between the organization’s business goals and IT requirements.

“The IT needs should be aligned with the existing infrastructure so that areas that need to be mobile can be identified easily,” said Manish Garg, COO& Co-Founder, Endeavour Software Technologies. “It is important to look at mobility from an infrastructure point of view. Many a times organizations can make the mistake of looking at it as something that is independent and distinct from the existing IT infrastructure but enterprise mobile applications make use of the same IT infrastructure that serves other enterprise applications.”

Taking the argument a step further, ST Sathiavageeswaran, General Manager – Information Systems, HPCL said that evaluating the mobile readiness of the IT set up is absolutely necessary before kicking off deployment.

He said, “In addition to evaluating key elements including messaging mechanism, remote connectivity options, security and the level of integration, organizations should also take into account the proliferation of mobile devices across the enterprise and the usage of the same by employees.”

However, Sathiavageeswaran cautioned that organizations have to be well aware of the business requirements and the kind of services and applications that users want. “You must do a thorough analysis of what kind of information is necessary for the mobile user. If it is simply a question of providing access to a specific piece of information, then they may not necessarily need to develop resource hungry, complex applications and simpler applications supported by smartphones or Blackberry could be developed.”

He argues that tailor-making simpler applications for information delivery on mobile platforms makes sense because more often than not the user’s primary concern is to stay up to date with the latest information rather than the need to work on a corporate application.

“As opposed to having access to the information, the need for users to log in and work on the corporate application and the ERP system is rare in our case,” he informed.

Vijay Sethi, VP and CIO, Hero Honda Motors

According to Vijay Sethi, VP and CIO, Hero Honda Motors getting the business buy-in for systems access to be provided to mobile workforce is critical for any mobility rollout to succeed. He said that formulation of any mobile IT strategy has to be preceded by a clear top-management commitment to enterprise mobility, as only senior management back up will help the mobility initiative sustain itself in the long run.

“In fact, mobility projects should have greater user participation and should be driven by the business users more than anything. It is critical that line-of-business leaders and end-users are involved in the application design process because success or failure is dependent on end-users adopting and evangelizing the solution. Mobility rollouts differ from other type of IT rollouts in that users are likely to utilize these tools constantly and bring in changes to their daily processes as a result of them,” added Endeavour’s Manish Garg.

Lured by the relatively lower costs, organizations can also be tempted roll out standalone mobile applications. However, experts tend to advice against this since standalone infrastructure is often not conducive when it comes to introducing new mobile services. Instead, they prescribe rolling out a general mobile middleware-based infrastructure. Moreover, standalone mobile applications typically tend to have a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) because of support costs. It is critical that an enterprise mobility strategy supports standardized and customizable mobile solutions and not applications based on specific devices or rigid platforms.

Organizations need to look beyond short-term objectives of mobility. Quite often, the immediate value that mobility tends to bring to an enterprise can hinder its future in the long term. Companies should refrain from doing a typical ROI analysis for a specific mobility rollout because it is best if it is seen an evolutionary process in which the capabilities are extended gradually from a specific set of users to a wider base across the enterprise.

CIO Concerns

When it comes rolling out enterprise mobility initiatives and the top CIO concerns associated with mobility, a few issues surface more prominently than others do. For the likes of Satish Pendse, CIO, Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) and Marico’s Girish Rao, their primary concerns tend to revolve around availability and network performance.

“Mobility roll outs involving real-time information access or interpersonal communications or accessing corporate applications such as ERP or CRM require a certain level of network performance and it can still be a problem given the current infrastructural issues in the country, especially in the remote areas,” said Pendse.

According to Marico’s Rao the environment is still not conducive enough when one talks about slightly heavier mobile applications such as those that let users access and work on the corporate ERP or applications involving video streaming which are spectrum dependent.

Then there are those for whom security remains the primary concern.

For Vijay Sethi of Hero Honda, developing security controls and policies is extremely critical. He said, “As we expose more systems, we need to have robust security measures not just within the boundary walls of the organization but from wherever the application or information is being accessed, whether it is being accessed from a mobile phone or through a PDA or even a laptop.”

Agreeing with Sethi, TVS’ Dhandapani opined, “Security should be given top priority since organizational information can be sensitive in nature and proper authentication of the access points as well as devices needs to be put in place. Companies must establish clear mechanisms for monitoring the system. In our case since the messaging systems rely on the Internet we emphasize proper security measures including firewall and authentication.”

Final word

Today’s enterprise workforce is increasingly mobile and from the looks of things it appears that the trend will only grow over time. Enabling a mobile workforce within the organization will mean investing in technologies using which an organization will be able to address major business issues that currently hinder its growth.

The cautious approach of Indian organizations towards investing in mobility, though temporary, is perfectly understandable given all the hype around it. Besides the doubts around security and availability, there still exist organizations that still do not think they can fully trust their employees to do their jobs from outside the four walls of the office. However, if the history of tech adoption among Indian enterprises is anything to go by, it is only a matter of time!

rajendra.c@expressindia.com